Hainzl Industriesysteme GmbH is a leading developer of mechatronic, electronic, and electrical products, machines, and systems. Based in Austria, the 65-year-old company provides products and systems for industrial automation and machine and plant construction throughout Europe.
An unplanned IT outage, where two disks failed simultaneously, was a wake-up call for the company. Although Hainzl avoided a major catastrophe, the disk failures underscored the importance of having high network and application availability. In a digital world, downtime results in notable losses in productivity and in the bottom line.
It wasn’t the only network issue, however. Staff complained that some reporting systems were sluggish. Slow response times protracted file loading and interfered with data analysis, making it difficult for staff to complete their work in an efficient manner.
No More Disruptions: The Move to Hitachi VSP
The disk failure spurred Hainzl’s IT team to review the network infrastructure and improve resiliency to minimize the risk of future disruptions. The company worked with K-Businesscom, a Cancom company, to evaluate and install a fully redundant data storage solution that would support the mid-sized business and its wide range of systems and applications. The Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) E Series won the day.
The IT team deployed two full-flash Hitachi Vantara VSP E590s, which offers an active-active cluster configuration with high performance and availability. Installed in two different locations, the Hitachi storage system supports all of Hainzl’s essential business applications and provides superior data protection. The VMware cluster supports 100 virtual machines, and the all-flash configuration allows Hainzl to use fewer drives to reach its desired performance levels. That translates to lower costs, higher energy efficiency, and increased scalability.
Real-time Insights from the Ops Center
With the installation complete, Hainzl’s IT team deployed the Hitachi Vantara Ops Center Analyzer to gain additional storage insights and management capabilities. A dashboard provides real-time data, such as storage capacity and utilization. The software also offers historical data and predictive analytics, enabling the Hainzl team to make data-driven planning and optimization decisions. On the management side, Hitachi Ops Center provides a central point of control, and the software’s AI and machine learning algorithms make automatic adjustments to optimize the system as needed.
The Hitachi Vantara VSP solution has presented clear bottom-line and productivity benefits. With built-in data compression and deduplication available through Hitachi Adaptive Data Reduction technology, Hainzl requires only half the storage space it needed before to operate all 100 virtual machines. Network performance has increased as much as 85 percent, and staff noticed. As an added bonus, the Hitachi solution cost 100,000€ less than competitors’ offerings and lead time to deployment 80 percent shorter.
In addition, Hainzl has tapped Hitachi Vantara’s proactive maintenance and support services, which conducts frequent system analysis and recommends software and security updates to boost performance and optimize the network. As a result, the data storage solution is easier to manage, more secure, and more reliable. It protects against ransomware and cybersecurity threats, and offers the scalability needed to as Hainzl continues to modernize and automate its manufacturing processes.
Read the full case study to learn how Hainzl boosted business continuity with Hitachi Vantara data storage solutions.
Image Credit: Hitachi Vantara